In the beginning of rugby as an embryonic world game, it was British rugby that invaded the colonies, promoting their version/vision of what the rugby game was or should be.
There were tours to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in the 1880s, 1890s and 1900s.
These teams, to their credit, brought a more expansive rugby game to the colonies than what was being played there, where the restrictive laws were interpreted literally.
For instance, in 1883 the first Lions side introduced Australian and New Zealand teams to the notion of ‘rucking back’ from the endless mauls that were constipating back play.
In Australia and New Zealand it was thought rucking back in a maul/ruck would automatically put the sides behind the ball offside as it came back to them. Strictly speaking this was correct.
But, as with the modern maul, where the ball is allowed to be passed back behind a wall of forwards, the legal fiction was created in UK rugby that for the purposes of clearing a ruck/maul there was no offside line in the mauls/rucks.
In 1905 with the All Black, 1906 with the Springboks and 1908 with the Wallabies, the touring mode was reversed.
These three teams all brought an athleticism, robustness and, in the case of the All Blacks, some advanced notions of back play, with a fullback who ran like a wing rather than adopt the traditional role of the custodian.
Since professional rugby came in 1996, it has been the Southern Hemisphere teams that have maintained this tradition of bringing new ideas and a greater emphasis on athleticism to the modern game of rugby.
There has been one exception to this, and that was Sir Clive Woodward’s superb England side that won the 2003 Rugby World Cup tournament, almost 10 years to he day.
The defeat of the Wallabies in the final by England represented the 12th successive defeat of Southern Hemisphere sides (five South Africa, two New Zealand and five Australia) by Woodward’s England.
No Northern Hemisphere team has come even remotely close to this sort of achievement. I would rate this England team as their best ever, and one of the great sides in the history of rugby.
And, like all great sides, they brought new ideas to the way rugby can be played.
The forward pack was swaggeringly good, over-powering opponents in the set pieces and in the tackle collisions.
It was a mobile pack, too, that had the power of a Springboks pack and the pace and skill of an All Blacks side, with Neil Back complementing the brutality of strength of the other seven forwards with his own quickness to the ball and skill at the tackle and in turning over ball.
The backs were coached to kick the ball down the middle of the field, an innovation that forced the defensive side to have lengthy kicks to the distant touch line or attempt to run the ball back against a brick wall England defensive line.
Jonny Wilkinson’s clever kicking game dictated the way the team play and accrued points. He invariably took points, either from penalties or dropped goals, whenever he could.
He also perfected the kick-pass to wingers standing on a distant touch-line. This tactic had the effect of making the field larger by exploiting the limits of its width.
Other elements of England’s game, the continuity game and the two lines of attack with forwards standing flat and backs standing deeper behind them, came from plagiarising ideas developed by Rod Macqueen and his wonderful Wallabies side that beat the All Blacks 3-0 in 1998 and then won the 1999 Rugby World Cup tournament by over-running France in the final.
The point here is that British rugby writers, especially Stephen Jones, complained constantly the two lines of attack was a ‘cheating’ tactic, along with George Smith’s turn-over methods.
Since the England glory days of 2003, the SH teams have been in the ascendency, with the Springboks winning the 2007 Rugby World Cup tournament and the All Blacks the 2011 Rugby World Cup tournament.
Graham Henry’s All Blacks completed the two Grand Slams it contested in this period, too.
There is more than bragging rights between the two hemispheres involved in all of this.
When England were dominant, the RFU was able to exert enormous pressure on the IRB to see how the game should be played through their NH eyes.
With the dominance of the SH teams in Europe, especially the All Blacks, the IRB has been more inclined to at least listen to the SH ideas of making rugby more attractive to play and watch than they were in the past.
After the Rugby World Cup 2007 debacle, when a defensive NH game dominated with the referees, the IRB tried to develop some experimental laws to open up play.
The RFU, in a recalcitrant mood after dishing Woodward, tried to stop the experiment totally.
In the end, a number of the more important ELVs were brought in and rugby is now a game – as the British and Irish Lions, the Springboks, the All Blacks and the Wallabies (in their last two Tests) have shown this season – that can be played as an absorbing drama and as great spectacle.
England, under astute new coach Stuart Lancaster, and Wales, with the New Zealander Warren Gatland at the coaching helm, have embraced the SH concept of rugby as an athletic, fast-paced and skilful game.
In this sense, the SH powers have won the battle for what sort of game rugby should be. In a real sense, this has made the task of the SH powers much harder than they were in the past.
The NH sides, as England showed against the All Blacks last year when they monstered them, are quite capable of playing lethal rugby in the SH manner.
There is some evidence, too, with the refereeing of Nigel Owens and Wayne Barnes, that some leading European referees are becoming more sympathetic to the SH way of playing the game.
On Sunday morning (1:30am AEDT), all this theory gets puts to the test.
Will the nit-picking Irish referee George Clancy join with Owens and Barnes and embrace the inclusive, ball-in-hand SH way of playing rugby?
Will England stay with their new determination to try to win Tests by scoring tries with attacking rugby?
Can the Wallaby pack hold the bully-boy England pack in the scrums, an area where most of the team’s defeats in Europe, and especially against England, have started?
Can the Wallaby backs replicate their sparkling attack against the All Blacks to bewilder the England defence?
Can England start the process of making Twickenham a fortress from now to the Rugby World Cup 2015 tournament, as it was in the glory days of Woodward where between 1999 and 2004 England were unbeaten in 22 Tests?
